Angry Residents Heckle Detroit Mayor At Meeting

DETROIT - OCTOBER 29: White House Council on Auto Communities and Workers Executive Director Ed Montgomery (left) and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing (right) wait to speak at a press event at Detroit Edison October 29, 2009 in Detroit, MIchigan. Montgomery was at the facility to highlight the White House's announcement Tuesday of an $83 million award to Detroit Edison's smart energy grid program. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Bing and administration officials addressed several hundred residents at the Northwest Activities Center in Detroit Thursday night. The meeting was the second of a dozen Bing must hold this year under the city charter.

The crowd’s fervor threatened to end Thursday’s meeting and at one point the deputy mayor tried to step in to calm the crowd.

“Please, if you don’t allow us to talk, we can’t have the meeting,” Kirk Lewis shouted in a frustrated tone. “I think it’s important that we settle down and let’s have a discussion here.”

The contract cuts wages by 10 percent and requires workers to pay 20 percent of their medical costs.

“Every person on salary took a 10 percent cut. It never happened, it never happened, it never happened to police and fire,” Bing said over jeers from the crowd. “Now that we have the budgetary problems that we have, there’s no way that we can fix the city without everybody participating in the pain. No way around it.”

Bing later the crowd “there is no negotiation to sell Belle Isle,” referring to the state proposal to operate the park under a 99-year lease.

Before a consent agreement was reached with the state, Detroit was on course to be more than $400 million in debt, and was reportedly on the brink of bankruptcy.